Elemental
by polar-realm
Summary: Four ficlets for the women of Avalanche  Tifa, Aeris, Yuffie and Jessie , based on the four elements.
1. Fire: Tifa

Warnings: Mention of canon major character death. Also: plotlessness.

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><p>Tifa isn't afraid of fire.<p>

She ought to be, maybe. She's seen enough of it, after all, to know how much it can destroy, and how very quickly. She should flinch, turn her face away from the flames instead of towards them. She never does.

She wipes the tables down while music plays, tinny and crackling with static, listens to Marlene playing with her trucks in the background and humming tunelessly in time with the radio. The bar is almost empty at this hour, just a few hardcore drunks and lonely vagrants, and two lovers in the corner table who don't seem inclined to leave. She isn't inclined to throw them out, either, though she could do it without too much trouble. She knows what it's like to need a place to go, and hell, she doesn't much want to be alone with herself right now either.

When she first came to Midgar, she'd had nothing left to her name but some gil and the clothing she was wearing, and the anger trapped like coiled lightning in the pit of her stomach. She lost her hat on the first day beneath the plate, pushing through crowds to reach a train that she never did catch, and she lost her last few gil to a pickpocket some time after. She hasn't lost the anger yet.

She's not a stranger any longer. She knows her way through the city and the slums, the backalley labyrinths and decrepit infrastructure beneath the plate. Most would-be thieves in Sector 7 take one good look at her, put name to face, and back the fuck off - and not just because she knows half of them by name and their preferred drink orders by memory. There are even days when she sees the bar counter, worn and scarred by time, or the reflection of light on glass bottles caught from the corner of her eye, and the word in her mind is _home_.

And that's almost enough to scare her sometimes, that word and that thought. Because every time it happens, it catches her off guard and all she can do is wonder just how long all of this can last.

Barret had taken her aside before the mission and asked her a favor, and she had agreed that someone needed to guard the base and take care of Marlene, and no one had talked about the real reason she wasn't out there with them tonight. Now, sitting here and counting seconds, it's the only thing she can think of. There needs to be someone left who knows about the Shinra, remembers everything they've done. Someone has to be there to keep AVALANCHE going, if no one else comes back.

The song on the radio ends, and the next number they play is an old one, slow saxophone and lilting piano, notes that fall like rain. For a moment she can't place it, and then she does. Nibelheim, that cold spell when no one had dared to venture too far out from the town. The year she had turned fourteen. Fire had been life, that winter, and the radio had been what kept her sane. She misses the scent of clean-burning woodsmoke, the comfort of warmth on nights when the world outside was sharp with killing frost. But you're not supposed to look back, not when you've got the dead behind you. That's the way it goes in every story, and maybe she ought to remember that.

If they die, she thinks, they'll die warriors' deaths. If they die, she'll avenge them.

Marlene is making truck noises beside the bar counter, _vroom vroom_ and _brrrrrrrrrr_, serious as only a three year old can be. Tifa scoops her up, holds the tiny warm body close against her and scans the bar one more time, counting seconds and heartbeats, listening to her music rising through the noise.

She isn't afraid. Or not of fire, anyway.


	2. Water: Aeris

Aeris dreams a city with no name.

There is a road winding down from the mountains, overgrown and crumbling, and in her dream it takes her by slow steps to a valley drowning in light and silence. Houses like shells line white stone streets, and there are strange plants the color of ash and chalk that grow up around her like petrified coral, as if she is walking along the bottom of some long dry sea. Time hangs heavy in the air here, and a stillness so absolute that even the rhythm of her breathing seems to break it.

She dreams herself following that same path through alabaster buildings and darkened doorways, her footfalls stirring up long-settled dust, and then along a spiral staircase that takes her into the cool depths, down and down and down. There's a pool there, in that quiet place beneath the earth where the light turns strange. There's an alter.

Aeris wakes on a bed of dry leaves, curled up against Barret's back with Cloud snoring beside her. The leaves are pale on the ground, washed out by moonlight, and she doesn't need to see it to know the dawn will turn them red and golden. She digs her fingers into the earth, breathes in the rich, dark scent of soil, and she realizes that she's shaking. That won't do, she thinks. That won't do at all. She sits up, and then stands, brushes dirt from her knees and pulls her skirts into order, feels the Planet spinning steady beneath her feet. It's close to midnight now, and close to silent, and the stars above are very bright.

Aeris knows about dreams. She knows about fate, too, and exactly how far it does and doesn't extend. Knowing how to take that path is the same as knowing how to avoid it.

She lifts a hand to her hair, absently, feels the cool surface of the materia she wears there, the one she's worn for as long as she can remember. It had been a gift. _Useless, _she remembers telling Cloud, and the way she had smiled then, gently. She's always been good at lying.

Nanaki will be out there, prowling the campsite and keeping watch, but that shouldn't be a problem. She's always been good at slipping away, too. She bends one last time to brush her fingers along the ragged fringe of Cloud's hair, to touch Barret's shoulder lightly, whispers a small invocation - as if power came that easily, as if it was possible to keep anyone safe just by wanting it. She doesn't say goodbye. She doesn't see the point. But she lingers just a little longer than she really needs to, even so. And then she stands, and sets off toward the city, and she doesn't look back.


	3. Earth: Yuffie

Yuffie needs to feel the earth beneath her feet. She's never felt safe without it.

Maybe safety's overrated anyway. She figures it has to be, at least if you've got the balls to call yourself a ninja. And she isn't scared of much - not WEAPONS or Shinra or Vincent's freaky, freaky vampire eyes, and not silver-haired supersoldiers who can't decide between a god complex and an Oedipus complex neither. That kind of crap only scares little kids, and old man Cid can say what he likes about her, but she's _not_ a brat. But when you're miles above the ground, and the floor is pitching and heaving beneath your feet, wind howling around you and tearing at your hair and your clothing and, like, super-badass armor, and - well. You're at the mercy of the elements, is the thing. And mercy is not something the elements are exactly known for.

From what she's heard, there's a materia that keeps you from falling. If she had that one, there's no way Cloud or any of the rest of them would ever pry it from her hands.

Not like that's any help right now, of course. But the thought of materia is better than the thought of imminent gravitational death by a long shot. Yuffie opens her pack a fraction, just enough to see the stockpiled wealth inside, glowing with its own inner light, and it's weird how just the sight of all that materia is enough to make her feel safer. It feels like glass when you touch it, rings like crystal when you tap it with the flat of a blade. She selects one, holds it in her palm, cool and red and heavier than it should be. _Leviathan_, she thinks, and it isn't exactly a prayer, but it's not exactly _not_ a prayer either. You can't own the gods, much less steal them. But when she asks, this one will answer.

Wutai lost the war because of materia. Everybody knows that. Get enough of that stuff on your side, she figures, you can make yourself damn near invincible.

_That's_ what she wants. To be invincible. She doesn't care about saving the Planet, or Cloud's massive personal issues, or anything else like that. She doesn't. Yuffie Kisaragi watches out for herself, and for Wutai when she feels like it, and nobody else in the world. She turns the summon materia over in her palms, thinks about prayers and summonings, and gods who will answer when you call. It isn't smart to put too much trust in that kind of crap. Not too bright to put any trust in people, either, no matter what Tifa keeps telling her. Yuffie knows the way things work.

After all, Aeris ran away. Right when Yuffie had been starting to like her, too. It isn't fair. It isn't right.

It had been _dumb_. That's the worst part of it, the part that leaves her livid. Except – It had been dumb, _except_. Yuffie's heard stories about the Midgar slums, and Aeris grew up there, selling flowers on the street, and dumb plus Midgar plus selling flowers on the street equals evolution in action. Aeris knew how to take care of herself.

Right up until the day she kicked it, at least. Pulled the croak chain. Joined the majority. Yuffie shivers, and scowls at her feet. If they were on the ground, she wouldn't be thinking like this. And that damn freezing-ass wind wouldn't be making her eyes water like this, either.

And Yuffie isn't going to be making that whole warm-and-fuzzy trust mistake again. She's going to keep things sharp and simple, and she's going to con these AVALANCHE losers for all they're worth and ditch them at the nearest opportunity, and she's going to look out for herself and maybe Wutai and nobody else in the world. No matter what.

Except –

Yuffie shakes her head, vision blurring, feels the weight of Leviathan in her hands and tries not to think about falling. She isn't scared, and she isn't stupid, and she _knows_ the way the world works. It's not difficult. As long as she can keep her feet on the ground, she'll be alright.


	4. Air: Jessie

Jessie remembers, distantly, a time when she could look out the window and see the sky.

That was long ago, of course. She was only a kid back then, and really, it was mostly her mother who remembered it. It was just this _blue_ up there, the old woman used to say, and she would get this tired sort of pinched, wistful look on her face that always made Jessie want to punch something, and after that she wouldn't say much more of anything at all. Now, the ceiling is metal raised on pylons, a steel-bound marvel of modern engineering resonating with the whistle and clank of the trains that run along the center. The air is stifling, smoke-scented, and the light comes from mako lamps and hazy neon signs strewn like beacons along some faraway coast. Jessie used to have nightmares, after they put the plate up, where the lights would go out, just flicker and die without warning.

Her mom told her about that, too, those nightmares. She doesn't remember them at all.

Jessie's a Sector 6 girl. People make jokes about that, but what it means is that she knows how to get money out of you no damn matter how she does it, beg, cheat, scam or steal, and that she learned to handle a knife and a gun before she hit the far side of fourteen years and hates it every time she has to use 'em. She grew up scrawny and awkward, scars on her knees from climbing up too many walls and falling too hard, and even if schooling had been in the cards she wouldn't have bothered, because Jessie's only ever cared about things that might one day work. She makes her living in a junk shop instead, repairing or cannibalizing the remains of cast-off electronics and learning all she can on the side about what works right, and what doesn't, and how to fix it so it does.

And then she's eighteen and restless, and all she wants, really, is just to see the damn sky once in a while.

Which is a waste of time, and the thing about time, Jessie knows, is that it don't ever come cheap. But she can't stop hearing her mother's voice in her mind, every time she looks at the weapons she carries with her and doesn't want to use. She can't stop thinking.

Jessie cleans the pistol carefully, reassembles it and holds it up to catch the glow of artificial light, and thinks about sunlight through open windows and how it might look different shining on dull steel or anything else. There's a hunger in her that has nothing at all to do with a full stomach, and the gun is heavy in her hands, and some days it occurs to her that there's a lot you can do with a knowledge of codes and chemicals and wires. She knows well enough what happens when you subject a volatile compound to heat, or to pressure.

_It used to be blue up there_.

She leans back in her chair, points the gun up at the ceiling, pretends to sight down the barrel and pull the trigger. Thermodynamics. She's always liked that word, and that thought. Friction, spark. _Bang_.

Her hands are stained with carbon, dark around the fingernails, and the fact is that the dirt of this city gets into your skin after a little while, and she isn't sure that bothers her. It's her city, after all, her slums. She has a right to be goddamn proud of 'em.

Ain't no point in dreaming, and yeah, she knows that. But she grins fierce, breathing in the scent of clean metal and listening to the growl and thrum of machinery, somewhere out beyond her walls. It's all circuitry in her mind now, laid out in orderly perfection like her work never is in life, and she closes her eyes and thinks about chemistry and tactics, and where she's going to go from here.

And she dreams.


End file.
